I know this topic can bring out many many opinions but I will happily listen to all for advice.
Will my truck, a heavy duty Ford 2500 crew cab with a long bed pull an aluminum 4 horse Cherokee gooseneck trailer?
I have been pouring through the owners manual, very confusing and looking at the metal plate with what I think are weights on the trailer… help!!
A good place to start would be to look up the specs on the decoded VIN and/or the door frame sticker to find out the towing capacity and the payload capacity. Then you need to know the weight of the full trailer. Then we can say yes or no 
This is actually a major reason why I bought a new trailer this year. We had initially considered a use trailer but no one knew the curb (empty) weights of their trailers, and I wasn’t willing to risk buying a trailer that my truck couldn’t safely tow. So we bought new, because that’s the only way I could know for sure without taking someone else’s trailer to a weigh station.
We’ll need more info to figure out your tow capacity, especially year and engine. You can see a Ford tow capacity chart here: https://www.ford.com/cmslibs/content/dam/brand_ford/en_us/brand/resources/general/pdf/guides/21Towing_Ford_SuperDuty_PU_Dec3.pdf Google should pull up a similar one for your year.
I find the B&W Hitch Towing resources really useful for figuring out your towing capacity: https://www.bwtrailerhitches.com/towing-help-gooseneck
My (actually now my son’s) 1996 superduty diesel F-250 easily pulled a loaded aluminum 4-horse featherlite everywhere. I never felt that it was a struggle or had issues stopping or hauling though I will say that going through the Rockies did go slower and use more fuel. I don’t know if the later models are as work-horse like; but, this truck is still in service and pulls even heavier weight around town (my son uses it to pull a flat bed with a CAT skid steer on it).
Newer ones may not be as quite work-horse like, but most modern trucks are usually better equipped at hauling and have higher tow ratings than the older ones.
(My FIL has the same truck and it’s a beast–we love it and have used it to haul before with zero issues. 1996 and it has less than 50K miles on it!)
@In_the_Air–I have a good friend who hauls a big 3+1 fully loaded with an F-250 (gas) crew cab, long bed. She hauls all the time and hasn’t had issues.
I don’t know why it wouldn’t?
We have a 2000 Ford F-250 that we have used to pull everything from a 33 foot bumper pull camper to a small utility trailer. It has had no problems pulling my 16 foot steel stock trailer fully loaded for the last 15 years.
That trailer empty only weighs 5400 lbs so you’re more than good with your truck.
Do yourself a favor. Look up your track’s VIN number, and seek out how much it is actually rated to tow. Learn what size engine you have as well as what you rear axle ratio is, as all those contribute to the amount you can tow. Call a dealership or see if you can get the information online. The VIN number is crucial for this!
Next, go weigh your trailer with all your accompanying stuff loaded on it. Everything you are going to be dragging along with you.
You can weight at trucks stops, quarries, farmer’s co-ops, grain facilities.
This is the only way to know for sure exactly what you are dealing with. And you should know for sure.
I pull a steel two horse gooseneck all the time. Was just looking at an aluminum 4 horse Cherokee trailer and thinking how nice it would be to be able to take four kids fox hunting …
I will talk to the dealership and see what they can tell me.
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